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[Interrupt]

Sword combat is starting to feel very slow, though, in comparison to the increased pace of the regular gameplay.

Have any suggestions on how to improve the melee combat? I don't want to go totally twitch with it but it is a bit clunky right now.

[DrDerekDoctors]

I think maybe have it so it doesn't slow you down until it's full "powered up" so it doesn't make movement leaden as quickly. Make the dagger "power up" faster, too. If it was a sword, I could understand the lack of pace, but it's a dagger.

Make the dagger strike animation jab into the screen a bit more, as it basically appears to pull away from the enemy when you release the attack button. Or possibly have it slash across the enemy (maybe rotate the angle of the dagger so it appears more animated), leaving a motion trail if it hits? Either way if you're concerned about the dagger being "too fast" in terms of the "power up" you could make the strike with it heavier and last longer to compensate.

Enemies could react to the hits a lot more, too, as that'll sell the strikes more. Even if it's just shaking them a bit, with a little rotation, rather than specific animations.

Adding some sound, even stuff you poop out of bfxr in a single half-hour session will help immeasurably, though.

[Interrupt]

New testing version: 3-24

3-24: the sound update! I Updated libGdx to the latest nightly version, catching up on months worth of bugfixes, which should take care of all the save / load related issues and now the game can again run on Android. Also implemented a bunch of sound effects so most of my time lately has been in making things sound good. Thanks for the prod DrDerekDoctors, had been ignoring audio for too long.

There still is a lack of ambient sound though, either needs some ambient cave sounds like wind and creepy noises or some music. I suck at music beyond NES style chiptunes, anyone have a placeholder track?

[DrDerekDoctors]

Hurrah! Downloading!

...

The new sound works well with the visuals. Really adds a lot to it.

I reckon you could get away with a similar approach for ambient. Get some drippy cave noises and other miscellaneous stuff and apply an echo to it so it sounds a bit distance. Likewise if the creature have bleats you could hear in the distance that'd add to the atmos.

[schipman]

Will the spell system be based more on the ultima underworld spell system- IE will it use a combination of runes?

Will you discover new spells as you explore the dungeon?

Edit: I can't run this build, I get a black screen and then crash to desktop.

[offset]

Hey, much better with sounds! 
But after opening door and descent down, i got a extremely big lags! 

[Interrupt]

Been making some progress lately, the game is now fully playable on Android, I replaced the inventory system with one more like in Ultima Underworld, and added the macguffin (Yithiian Orb) and a boss monster (Lich) on the final level. When the player has the Orb monsters will continously spawn and the player will need to make a mad dash back up to the dungeon entrance.

Also put together a quick look video, talking and playing games is hard:

[DrDerekDoctors]

Good to hear it's still going well. The new video is nice. What kinda' things are you planning on putting into the game to make sure it has lotsa' replayability, btw?

[Interrupt]

I'm hoping that different player classes (rogue, warrior, wizard) and generated dungeons and loot can be the big factor in replayability. I'm missing some item types alltogether in the current version, like scrolls and spellbooks, and the magic enchantments on items should be random as well. I'm thinking that each magical item can have a base spell type like teleportation, fireball, or heal and some tweakable values that control the effectiveness so that the item generator can make stuff like a 'Shortsword of Teleportation' that randomly teleports monsters away on hit

[C418]

This is fucking awesome

[volkan]

omg!
please finish it fast!
how about adding a 4 player co-op like "Eye of the Beholder"?

[ajf]

Saw the video Notch linked to. This looks like it will be a really fun game!
For me it looks like the parts I liked most about Minecraft (exploring, fighting, although I sucked at them).

I hear this will run on Android - I'm getting an Android v2.3.5 Gingerbread phone, but it has an unusual screen size of 320x240 with a qwerty keyboard. Would it work correctly on that?

[TheBlackSunshine]

Hey there,

Congrats on the shoutout from Notch first of all, that's how I found the game and it looks great!

Secondly, are we allowed to post gameplay on YouTube of the game? It's quite fun and I'd like to do a play through of somesort on my small YT channel, but many games don't allow that for pre-release versions of the game, so I thought I should ask first.

Thirdly, I ran the game on my machine and there was a slight issue. It decided to use all 12GB of my RAM, and when it had used it all, the game proceeded it drop down to 1 or 2 FPS every few seconds. Memory leak? It started dropping frames hard when I went down the first set of ladders, however it was already using about 8GB of RAM at this point anyway, according to the CoreTemp desktop widget.

System specs:
i5 2500k @3.3GHz
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3
Nvidia GTX 560Ti, MSI Twin Frozr OC II Edition @930MHz
12GB Corsair 1333MHz XMS3 RAM @1600MHz
Windows 7 64-bit

Keep up the good work

[Caran Elmoth]

haha! You've been Notched!

[DrDerekDoctors]

I'm hoping that different player classes (rogue, warrior, wizard) and generated dungeons and loot can be the big factor in replayability. I'm missing some item types alltogether in the current version, like scrolls and spellbooks, and the magic enchantments on items should be random as well. I'm thinking that each magical item can have a base spell type like teleportation, fireball, or heal and some tweakable values that control the effectiveness so that the item generator can make stuff like a 'Shortsword of Teleportation' that randomly teleports monsters away on hit

Sounds cool. From the length of the game video it seems like this is kind of an First-person-RPG version of Weird Worlds, and the thing which kept me coming back to that game was the unique stuff which would happen on each play-through which I didn't experience on the other play-throughs, in the exact same way that Spelunky occasionally throws rare features into the mix. Weird World's problem was that it didn't have enough of said uncommon stuff, so if you can nail making a nice big pool of that crap, then you're golden!

I'd imagine that with your really low-res graphics having lotsa' visual monster variety isn't exactly a challenge either, so that's good, too.

[jokubolakis]

I love this game. The only problem I have, is that after the first launch, game won't start

[paulsoaresjr]

Ooh, very nice! But I can't play until Invert Mouse is added!   I'll make a video for my channel as soon as they happens....

[DrDerekDoctors]

I love this game. The only problem I have, is that after the first launch, game won't start

Delete the save directory it creates.

[jokubolakis]

I love this game. The only problem I have, is that after the first launch, game won't start

Delete the save directory it creates.

Where are the saves stored?

[roshak]

i want to try this gem, but the dowload link doesnt seem to work for me... just a white screen and an error message, i'm the only one that has got that problem?